If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Hero's destroying a chamber

09-10-2017, 02:41 AM

I have a couple of a questions, since destroying a chamber is an extended action,
1.) How long is the time between rolls?
2.) Can any hero choose to start the process of destroying a chamber at anytime and what does that look like or entail?
3.) Why would a hero ever choose to cross dangerous or hazardous terrain to get to the horror if they can simply start destroying the chamber and either succeed or force the horror to come to you?

Even though due to dream logic chambers can be any size, a chamber that is a vast desert expanse or an endless forest should still take more turns to cross than a flooded basement.
3.) How do you deal with a hero crossing varying sized chambers? What kind of rolls are needed?
4.) When dealing with tilts like engulfing that require a Strength + Athletics roll to pull free, does 1 roll suffice for the entire duration of their journey across that chamber? What about tilts that deal damage over time, how do you determine how much time someone must spend in that chamber before finding the exit?

1: The interval is [Lair] minutes
2: As far as I know, they can do so at any time. It's not explained very well what it looks like in practice, but there's one example of a Hero pouring gasoline all over the Heart chamber.
3: Given how long it takes to destroy a Chamber, unless the Hero has Real World or suitable armor they'll almost certainly die from DoT Traits before coming close to destroying all but the weakest Lair.

4: Movement through space also follows dream logic. A desert could take hours or seconds to cross, and that depends on Traits not on "real" physical size.
5: Some Traits specify if the roll frees the victim for the scene, or just for a few turns. If it doesn't specify I would say ST discretion. At a minimum they have to deal with the turns necessary to force open a burrow

2 likes

Comment

As far as #2 goes I would say that you do need some logic to destroying the actual chamber. Like I would say you're note getting far in destroying a vast desert by trying to set it on fire or throwing dynamite. Granted that's just me, so if your ST wants to make it so the method only needs to be physically viable then that's fair. (Ie you can't set a sunken ship on fire because it's underwater.)

Now number 3 there is always the issue that fighting a Beast in its Lair is not necessarily the wisest course of action. Particularly if it's known that a Beast can bring in traits from other chambers, so suddenly desert has sinking sands and the lights of the day go up to the point the Hero can't see anymore. All the while you're fighting some Ugallu nightmare bird capable of god only knows what.

The other issue is mechanically if the Horror is awake and resisting then you add the Beasts resolve rating is added to the resistance. Phrased out of mechanical terms, the Beast's nature reinforces it's Lair making it harder to destroy a chamber when its awake. This would mean that a Hero's chance of damaging or destroying a Chamber goes down and would force them to be exposed to the elements of the Lair even longer regardless of whether or not the Horror comes out to play.

Comment

In our plays we argued that the destruction of a chamber involves in some kind of logic, usually by doing something inimical given the nature of the chamber/lair as evidenced by the lair traits. Given the fact that the lair is in the primordial dream we ruled that it starts to crumble once its resonance has been sufficiently altered. I think examples will work best to illustrate what I mean:

We had three attempts so far, two successful and one failure: One chamber was an abandoned suburb (formed from the place where the PC had scored an exceptional success on a nightmare roll) which was in a perpetual twilight (poor light) and overgrown with all kinds of thorny plants (undergrowth and stingy). The hero set it on fire which combated both the undergrowth and the poor light. As the beast managed to kill him before he reached the target success the fire died down and the plants overgrew everything again.

Another hero managed to successfully collapse a chamber modelled from a tunnel. It was completely dark, covered with all kinds of moulds (slimy) and covered in a stench from the decaying bodies of the victims of the horror. The hero started to break holes into the walls which let in sunlight and fresh air as he made progress the slime started to dry out, the darkness receded and eventually the chamber started to collapse with the falling fragments dissolving in the sunrise.

The third chamber was collapsed by the beasts themselves. It was a windy covered in glaciers mountain top (crosswinds, thin air, slippery, extreme cold, razored) the PCs managed to collapse it by building a "trait chain" using thin air to impose maze, which they used to impose engulfing, which was used to impose extreme heat, melting the ice. As the glacier thawed the mountain started to crumble as the stones where no longer held by permafrost.

Comment

Side topic, but somehow related - If Heroes has so much low chance of succeeding in Destroying the Lair inside it - HOW Heroes can really kill the Beast? As from what I get from BtP corebook, then physical Beast is killed, it's Horror return to Lair dimension.

Comment

Side topic, but somehow related - If Heroes has so much low chance of succeeding in Destroying the Lair inside it - HOW Heroes can really kill the Beast? As from what I get from BtP corebook, then physical Beast is killed, it's Horror return to Lair dimension.

Destroying a beast's lair entirely is an Herculean effort (pun intended), IE, not the kind of job someone without twelve powers could easily undertake. In that metric, simply sticking the beast's side with a stick for aggravated damage is generally enough to get by. The Hero might eventually hunt the lone horror on his own terms.

Comment

Side topic, but somehow related - If Heroes has so much low chance of succeeding in Destroying the Lair inside it - HOW Heroes can really kill the Beast? As from what I get from BtP corebook, then physical Beast is killed, it's Horror return to Lair dimension.

Stabbing the Beast to death in the physical world is a fair method of doing the job. Not necessarily easy, but generally agreed upon as easier than trying to kill them in the lair. If you kill the Horror then that ends both halves I believe (kind of sucks for the Beast in that regard) destroying the Beast through the human portion has the risk of turning the Horror into an Unfettered ,basically a ghost Beast or a hunger spirit, which Heroes still consider because it's dead, destroying the Lair actually doesn't kill a Beast. Destroying the entire Lair just forces the Horror to fully inhabit the human's flesh and what the Hero has done is create one of the rampant, which is going to be such a pain in to deal with after the pain in the neck that likely came from tearing down the Lair.

That said I don't think most Heroes are aware that those are things that happen, so even if we assume a Hero is likely to plan it through it would be fair for it not to account for the possibility of triggering an Inheritance. (Also if you're ST is nice your character's epilogue will include what's left of you character ripping apart the bugger responsible.)

1 like

Comment

Side topic, but somehow related - If Heroes has so much low chance of succeeding in Destroying the Lair inside it - HOW Heroes can really kill the Beast? As from what I get from BtP corebook, then physical Beast is killed, it's Horror return to Lair dimension.

The beast is kind of a tripartite being, the human, the horror, and the Heart of the lair all belong together. The Hero has to destroy one of them and the whole beast dies. So he can kill the beast by either killing the human body, by invading the lair and killing the horror, or by invading the lair and collapsing the heart. Killing the human body risks releasing the beast as an unfettered spirit - which is what I guess you mean with the Horror returns to Lair dimension - but that only happens if the beast was at full satiety.

Furthermore a less violent hero could starve the beast out. If he can get the beast convicted to prison sentence and the beast cannot feed his hunger on prisoners (e.g. a collector) it will starve and eventually die.

Comment

Furthermore a less violent hero could starve the beast out. If he can get the beast convicted to prison sentence and the beast cannot feed his hunger on prisoners (e.g. a collector) it will starve and eventually die.

Comment

Furthermore a less violent hero could starve the beast out. If he can get the beast convicted to prison sentence and the beast cannot feed his hunger on prisoners (e.g. a collector) it will starve and eventually die.

That's not how Hunger works. The Beast in question would feel a constant hunger and emptiness gnawing at their insides and good gods would the Horror be angry, but they wouldn't 'starve to death'. The Horror would go off into the dreamscape and torment the prisoners and nearby sleepers for its meals, probably drawing Heroes, but the Best would survive just fine. Until one of those heroes gets inside the prison and shanks them, or something.

Is it presumptuous of me to ask for alternating male/female pronouns?

1 like

Comment

As HelmsDerp mentioned there is an example about a beast starving in prison in the core book (p. 63 bottom left). The hungers are quite specific and not all can be met in prison. Lets look at some sample characters introduced for the families:
The first anakim is a judge who feeds from the terror of the accused when they're in his courtroom. Its hard to replicate that in prison.
The second anakim is a safe-cracker. He also won't be able to feed in prison - although he might well be able to break out as an after-thought.
The third anakim is simply beats up the wicked. Easy enough to do in prison - if he can avoid solitary confinement.
The fourth anakim is a hunter collecting trophies. Even if she could find suitable prey in prison its doubtful she will be able to keep the heads of her victims for collection.
The first eshmaki is a supervisor of a juvenile detention facility preying on the children there. If he ends up in prison for abusing his power he hasn't any children at his disposal anymore.
The second eshmaki steals heirlooms and replaces them with pipe bombs. In prison there won't be heirlooms and no materials to build pipe bombs.
The third eshmaki just kills people. That will work in prison but also earn him solitary confinement.
The forth eshmaki preys on the "elites" to show them that luck doesn't make them safer. That will be hard to do in prison as most people there are poor and out of luck to begin with.

So most beasts won't be able to feed in prison and even those that can will have to be careful lest the end up in solitary confinement. The way I see it a more likely limitation of this method is that some beasts can easily break out - especially if they have the infestation, shadowed soul, or titanic blow atavism. And that some beasts might not be doing anything illegal while feeding - if the anakim judge never accepts bribes or abuses his authority but simply feeds from the "normal" fear of being in courtroom, it will be difficult to have him convicted.

Comment

That's not how Hunger works. The Beast in question would feel a constant hunger and emptiness gnawing at their insides and good gods would the Horror be angry, but they wouldn't 'starve to death'. The Horror would go off into the dreamscape and torment the prisoners and nearby sleepers for its meals, probably drawing Heroes, but the Best would survive just fine. Until one of those heroes gets inside the prison and shanks them, or something.

Maybe I misunderstood the rules but it appears to me that if the Beast drops to 0 satiety it will gain the ravenous condition. Which according to p. 320 leads to "Every day that passes without replenishing a dot of Satiety causes her one level of lethal damage. She cannot heal lethal or aggravated damage while Ravenous (though magical healing from a third party works normally)." That would kill the beast over the course of of 1-2 weeks depending how many health dots it has. And while the horror would indeed go of hunting in the dreams it could only do so with a chance die so chances regaining satiety would be rather low. For example if the beast has 8 dots of health and lair 1-3 (= one hunting attempt per day) it has only about 50% chance to gain a dot satiety before dying of starvation.
If I have misunderstood anything please correct me.

It seems to me that the rules actually state the opposite? On p 320. it says that if the beast is ravenous meals with a satiety potential of 1-6 do not replenish satiety but regain a point of willpower instead. The beast can only regain a point of satiety through feeding by providing a meal with a potential of 8 or more, which would correspond to a very refined meal.
As with ajf115 if this is a wrong interpretation please correct me.

Comment

It seems to me that the rules actually state the opposite? On p 320. it says that if the beast is ravenous meals with a satiety potential of 1-6 do not replenish satiety but regain a point of willpower instead. The beast can only regain a point of satiety through feeding by providing a meal with a potential of 8 or more, which would correspond to a very refined meal.
As with ajf115 if this is a wrong interpretation please correct me.

To quote a few passages of the book.

Raising Satiety
Satiety increases when the character fulfills her Hunger.As Satiety falls, the Horror becomes less picky but more
demanding. A sated Horror needs less, but its tastes grow
refined and temperamental. When the Horror hungers, the
Beast becomes obsessed with finding and devouring. When
it’s fully sated, it can go into hibernation, making the Beast
nearly human.

[...]• Low Satiety: Characters with one to three dots of Satiety
have the Starving Condition. The Hunger isn’t far from
the surface, but this keeps the character focused and
dangerous. Atavisms are more effective at this level.
• Medium Satiety: Characters with four to six dots of
Satiety have the Sated Condition. Such a Beast can feed
its Hunger, but the Horror isn’t hungry enough to be
concerned with its survival and can afford to be choosy
about its meal. Medium Satiety is a dangerous place for
Beasts to be — it makes them soft and distracted, perfect
targets for Heroes.
• High Satiety: Characters with seven to nine dots of
Satiety have the Gorged Condition, and will only consume exactly
what the Horror wants at that moment.
Feeding is difficult and dangerous, as the Horror is close
to slumber. Nightmares are more effective at this level.[...]

[...]Beasts feed by satisfying their Hungers. Doing so can
be as simple as a Tyrant shoving a victim up against a wall
and screaming in his face, or as elaborate as a Ravager slowly
dismantling a victim’s life, piece by piece, until he’s either
completely ruined or he breaks off contact with the Beast. In
either case, the moment of feeding happens when the victim
experiences the shock.[...]